As of today, all users with an account of less than 90 days of age will not be permitted to use signatures at all.

After your account has reached 90 days of age, your signature will be unlocked and you can start using it on your posts.

Why?

We all notice those fluffy, pointless junk posts littering the forums from people who sign up just to spread backlinks. Lots of those people are not even here to participate -- they just post junk in the hope that either a search engine or actual users will come along and hit up their sites.

OMG, that's not fair. I'm not here to get backlinks.

Those of you who are here to be part of our community for the right reasons will hopefully understand. It's a shame that junk posters have spoiled it for the rest of us. I'm sorry.

Yes. We already hide ALL signatures from search engines already, and yet people still rock up with their dodgy keyword stuffing signatures. What's more, we still appear on those shonky 'Top 500 Dofollow Forums!!" lists promoted widely by the shadier side of the SEO industry.

Clearly, merely hiding these from Google isn't enough to deter these sorts of posters. This is another method we can use. Hopefully it will help.

This is not the only technique we are investigating.

HEY! I've been here longer and my signature is missing, what the heck?!

Oh no, sorry! This is definitely an oversight. Rest assured your signature is still stored in the database. Please PM me and I will fix it for you just as soon as I can.

GeeOne
—
2010-01-14T07:34:26Z —
#2

I must say right policy.

G!

akritic
—
2010-01-14T09:03:15Z —
#3

Fab news. :award:

Now people can start to remember that this forum is really for discussion and not one-sided brain-dead statements.

Who's with me?

SpikeZ
—
2010-01-14T09:19:13Z —
#4

Definitely the right choice Raena, fingers crossed the message will get through now!

I'm with you Andy

Stormrider
—
2010-01-14T09:22:13Z —
#5

Hopefully this time it'll work!

Stomme_poes
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2010-01-14T09:57:57Z —
#6

Psh, it'll work when no sigs are allowed at all.

I see people adding links in their regular posts as well. Sometimes someone snips it out but they don't catch them all.

PaulOB
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2010-01-14T10:16:58Z —
#7

Stomme_poes said:

I see people adding links in their regular posts as well. Sometimes someone snips it out but they don't catch them all.

Remember to click the report button and we'll catch them all

AlexDawson
—
2010-01-14T10:45:39Z —
#8

Good move, hopefully it'll stop those initial join and fluff posters who pollute the threads with meaningless drivel.

r937
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2010-01-14T10:50:24Z —
#9

this is ~wonderful~ news, thanks a lot

the cynic in me says watch out for the inevitable shitstorm 90 days from now...

one thing you might consider doing is, somewhere in the signup procedures, force new members to acknowledge that they have read and understand the signature policy

Dr_John
—
2010-01-14T11:06:27Z —
#10

GREAT!

I'm fed up reading one line posts from "members" who mysteriously only ever make one or two posts, and have their site link in the signature.

Perhaps 90 days is a bit harsh, I'd have thought 30 days, but if it gets rid of the fluff, great.

system
—
2010-01-14T11:10:13Z —
#11

This Rule is good as it make less spamming as spammer will not stick to 90 days...

kohoutek
—
2010-01-14T11:29:14Z —
#12

That's a fantastic decision! At least it'll keep a few spammers away.

aldonjohnes
—
2010-01-14T11:43:40Z —
#13

great! at least the the forum will get high relevant answers to questions

Sha
—
2010-01-14T11:48:48Z —
#14

Nice move. Gotta love SitePoint.

ArtphotoasiA
—
2010-01-14T12:42:40Z —
#15

I agree on the 90 days point.... I have noted also in other forums that the signature issue seams to be the main issue.To me the main issue on a forum should be content of post and presence of the user, not links or signatures...To me must ban people insulting, flaming, posting nonsense, posting only link to their business... just my 2 cents

With the new roule spammers and trolls will anyway join as they will not even notice the sig issue at start, then will go away.

If a forum want be fair with members and newcomers will not claim 50,000 members or more and just few thousands are really active (many does that) so why not delete inactive accounts, I saw just few forums to do that and I hope is true.What about this point?